Study backs nonsurgical way to fix heart valves

WASHINGTON — A new study gives a big boost to fixing a bad aortic valve, the heart’s main gate, without open-heart surgery. Survival rates were better one year later for people who had a new valve placed through a tube into an artery instead.

The results were reported Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Washington and prompted some doctors to predict that in the near future, far fewer people will be having the traditional operation.

‘‘It’s going to be very hard to tell a patient that if they need an aortic valve, surgery is going to be their best option,’’ said one of the conference leaders, Dr. Prediman K. Shah of Cedars Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.